Lotus Notes Notifier
- Contents
- Introduction
- Download
- Requirements
- Building
- Installation
- Troubleshooting
- Feedback
- Acknowledgements
- Links
The Lotus Notes Notifier is a Java
agent for the Lotus Domino
server that notifies the user about e-mails incoming to his/her e-mail
database. The notification is done by the means of the
Jabber XMMP protocol that is
supported by many instant messaging clients
(e.g Gaim).
Typical usage scenario is following:
- install the Lotus Notes Notifier agent on the Lotus
Domino server where your e-mail database resides
- start the IM client (the Lotus Notes client need not to be
running!)
- whenever new e-mail arrives to your inbox the agent sends you
short message containing its From and Subject fields
Cool, is not it? But there is more ...
The architecture of the Lotus
Notes Notifier is open and users can write their own plugins supporting
other types of notification channels like e.g. other IM protocols, SMS, etc.
Moreover during the installation process you can attach the agent to some other
database (not just e-mail) and event you want to be notified about.
If you are interested in this possibility have a look at the
JavaDoc plugin API specification and source
code of the Jabber notifier. Unfortunately the complete manual describing
how to write your own notification plugins is out of scope of this document,
but can be written in future.
Anyway if you have developed some notification plugins you are strongly
encouraged to share them with the community of other users! I am sure that there
are others that will find them very useful too.
You can download binary distribution or source code
of the Lotus Notes Notifier from its
project page
at the SourceForge.net.
To be written ...
- Download binary distribution of the Lotus Notes Notifier from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/lnn/
and unpack it:
jar -xvf lnn-X.Y.Z.jar
Or instead of downloading you can build the Lotus Notes Notifier
from the source code following steps described in section 4
- Download the Smack library from
http://www.jivesoftware.org/smack/.
Unzip the archive and copy the smack.jar and smackx.jar
files to the same directory where the lnn.jar and lnn.properties
are. (i.e. root directory of binary distribution or the build directory
of the source code tree)
- For the Jabber notifier plugin you will need two Jabber accounts. One for
the agent to send the notification messages and the latter one for you to receive
them. If you do not have such accounts already create them by the means of
your Jabber client. Do not forget to remember your usernames and passwords,
you will need them later.
- Start your favourite text editor and edit the lnn.properties
file according to your needs. Comments in the sample file describes each
property in detail. At least you will need to provide hostname of the
jabber server from which the agent should send messages and username and
password that it should use for logging in there.
- Now everything is prepared and you can create the agent. So start Lotus
Notes, login and open the e-mail database.
- Select Create - Agent from menu and new agent form appears.
Fill in its name (e.g. Lotus Notes Notifier) and optionally comment.
Mark it as Private (Options controls).
Within the Runtime controls select:
- Trigger: On event - After new mail has arrived
- Target: Newly received mail documents
- At the top of the dialog switch to the security tab (marked with the
key symbol). For Set runtime security level select Allow
restricted operations with full administration rights. Close the dialog.
- Select the Action item in the the left tree pane of the agent
design window. On the right top select Imported Java from
the Run combo box. Then push the button Import Class Files...
at the bottom of the window. In the dialog that appears select the directory
where you unzipped the binary distribution and import following files:
- lnn.jar
- lnn.properties (your edited version with your settings)
- smack.jar
- smackx.jar
Note that this step requires that all these files are in the same directory.
- In the Base class text box enter:
net.sf.lnn.LotusNotifierAgent
- Close the agent design window and confirm to save changes. The installation
is finished.
- Now start your Jabber client, login and wait for notification messages.
To test the installation send an email to your Lotus Domino e-mail account.
You should receive a notification message within 5 minutes after the mail arrival
to the Domino server.
When things go wrong and you do not receive any notifications try to look
into the note's log database. You will see some exception stack traces
there that will tell you what is wrong. Furthermore you can set the property:
lnn.debug = true
in the lnn.properties file and the agent will be more verbose.
Its messages you will find again in the note's log database.
Any kind of feedback (questions, bug reports, feature requests or comments)
is welcome. For this purpose use the forums, bug and request trackers that you
will find at the project page
at the SourceForge.net.
I would like to thank to Vladan Klíma - my friend and also the administrator of
the Lotus Domino server installation that was used for debugging
the Lotus Notes Notifier. Without his excellent knowledge and skills
this piece of software would never be released.